A UN human rights committee has heard there were credible reports that China is holding a million ethnic Uighurs in "counter-extremism centres".

A Japanese government helicopter has crashed in the mountains of Gunma. All nine crew members on board have been confirmed dead, police said on Saturday.

An plane has crashed after it was stolen by a ground employee from an airport in Washington state, authorities said.

North American Aerospace Defence Command scrambled fighter jets on Friday night to accompany the Horizon Airlines plane, which was steered away from Seattle and Tacoma by air traffic control, on its hour-long flight, ABC News reported.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Russia categorically rejects new US sanctions over alleged Russian involvement in the Skripal case.

Lavrov reiterated Russia's position that Moscow played no role in the alleged nerve agent attack on ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the British city of Salisbury, Xinhua quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying.

Eight persons were killed on Friday afternoon at Resulaj Village in Albania, where a 24-year-old man opened fire at his relatives over a property dispute, police said.

According to the police, all the victims were members of two Zykaj families, living in the same village.

Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria on Friday met Prime Minister-in-waiting Imran Khan and the two pushed for the resumption of bilateral talks and the envoy briefed New Delhi's concerns about terrorism, an official said.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan will take over as Prime Minister on August 18 and Indian cricket legends Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Navjot Sidhu have been invited for the swearing-in ceremony, a party spokesperson said on Friday.

The Islamic Hamas movement said that a truce with Israel on halting escalation in the Gaza Strip began from Thursday midnight.

The agreement, brokered by Egypt and UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, will end another round of military confrontation between Israel and Hamas, a source from Hamas told Xinhua news agency.